


Baby, Let's Take the Long Way Home

by Duck_Life



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: F/F, Friends to Lovers, Gay Mutant Road Trip, Hotels, Running Away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 08:34:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20005387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: After Lorna gets left at the altar, she and Jean run away together and learn some things about themselves and each other.





	Baby, Let's Take the Long Way Home

Lorna’s door is open, so Jean walks in without knocking. She should've prepared herself better for the scene in front of her. Lorna is slumped across her bed, hair strewn around her head in a tangle, her eyes red and swollen from crying. She glances up when Jean enters. 

“If you're here to probe my mind, don't bother,” she says. “Charles already handled it.”

Jean frowns sympathetically. “That's not what I'm here for,” she says. And she holds up a bottle of wine. “Mind if I join you?”

You don't need a corkscrew when you've got the telekinetic ability to draw the cork out of the bottle. Jean lets it roll under the bed and passes the wine to Lorna. “I swiped this from Charles’ wine cellar,” she explains while Lorna takes a gulp and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “He thinks we don't know about it.”

Jean takes a more moderate sip of wine and passes it back to Lorna. They go back and forth for a few minutes without talking. Then Lorna says, “You don't have to be here, you know.” Her voice is small and sad. She’s changed out of her wedding dress, but there are still about a dozen bobby pins in her hair and her eyes are rimmed with smudged mascara. “I screwed up. I shouldn’t’ve freaked out like I did, just…” 

Jean puts a hand on her shoulder. “I'm not going anywhere,” she says, not missing the look of relief and gratitude that Lorna tries to hide. “I know a thing or two about getting emotionally sucker-punched by a Summers brother.”

“What did you do?” Lorna says. “After… after you found out about Emma?”

Jean holds up the bottle. “This,” she says. “Only I was alone.”

* * *

When Lorna starts crying again, Jean sets the bottle down on the floor and pulls Lorna against her, running her fingers through the other woman’s grass-green hair. She picks out the bobby pins one by one and piles them on the floor beside her. “Shh, it's okay,” she soothes. “Let it out, honey.”

Lorna cries and cries, finally letting out a couple shuddering breaths and quieting. “Jeannie Grey,” she sighs. “What the hell happened to us?”

“We grew up.”

* * *

After a while, sitting on the floor and crying stops feeling justified, starts getting uncomfortable. Jean’s legs are asleep and she feels light-headed from the wine. “We should go somewhere,” she suggests, her arms looped around Lorna’s shoulders. “We should take a vacation.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere,” Jean says. “Away from here. Away from X-Men and Summerses and just… all this crap.” 

Lorna twists her neck around to look at her. “You serious?”

“As a stroke.” 

Lorna hums for a moment, deliberating, and then she shrugs. “Okay. Tomorrow. We’ll pack tonight and go tomorrow. Just head south for as long as we like.” 

“Yeah.” Jean kisses the top of her head. “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.” 

* * *

Jean’s already sliding in the driver's seat of her Subaru the next morning when Lorna turns and notices the shiny red sports car beside it. “Okay, what is  _ that  _ monstrosity?”

Jean narrows her eyes. “That's Scott’s,” she says darkly. 

“Hm.” Lorna contemplates for a moment, and then with a loud grinding sound, the metal roof peels up off the car and crashes to the ground. Lorna brushes past the damage and climbs into the passenger’s seat of the Subaru. “Tell Scott I made him a convertible.”

“Nice,” Jean laughs quietly as they drive down the long driveway of the mansion. “Now I feel like I should do something for you. Want me to go all Dark Phoenixy on Alex?”

Lorna shrugs. “Maybe later.”

* * *

About 20 minutes out from Westchester, Jean spots something in her rearview mirror that royally pisses her off. She sees the dot in the distance before she hears the roaring of the motorcycle. 

“Fuck,” Lorna sighs, twisting around in her seat to look back. “Is that—?”

“Yep,” Jean says, clicking her tongue. “Best there is at what he does. And what he does best is really goddamn annoying.” 

“Let’s lose him.”

“Can’t,” Jean huffs even as she eases her car up another 10 miles per hour. “His bike is faster than my car.”

Lorna chews her lip, looking from Logan’s approaching motorcycle to the dashboard, and back. “Maybe not,” she says finally. “Take your hands off the wheel.”

“What?”

“Just do it.”

Jean doesn’t typically follow Lorna’s bizarre suggestions without arguing. But she also doesn’t typically run away from her friends and family without even leaving a note. It’s a big day for things Jean doesn’t typically do. She takes her hands off the wheel. 

It jerks and then straightens out again. The speedometer inches up another 10 miles per hour even though Jean hasn’t pressed down on the accelerator. “Uh… Lorna?”

“Trust me.” Lorna’s expression is funny, half-smirk, half-focused. The car surges forward, moving faster with every second. Behind them, Logan’s bike revs as he tries to keep up. Now that he’s realized they see him, he’s kicking it into high gear. 

But Lorna isn’t going down that easily. 

“Whoo!” she shrieks, throwing her hands up as her powers of magnetism twist the car through traffic. Jean’s sensible Subaru is zipping down the highway like a racecar while Logan struggles to catch up. “I feel like Thelma and Louise.”

“What, both of them?”

“I get them confused,” Lorna admits. “Which one was Susan Sarandon?”

“Louise I think. But, hey, I get to be Susan Sarandon,” Jean says, trying to ignore the fact that her car is going about 170 miles per hour. “Red hair.”

“That’s not fair,” Lorna says. “And Geena Davis doesn’t have green hair. Nobody has green hair.” 

“You’re unique,” Jean agrees. The car accelerates. Behind them, Logan lags on his bike. 

“Whoo!” Lorna yells again, reveling in the whirlwind race and their breakneck pace. Instead of turning the car into the upcoming curve, she takes them off the road, zooming over the shoulder and barrelling toward a nearby ledge. 

“Lorna!” Jean says, clamping her hands on the steering wheel once again. “Lorna, what are you doing? When you said Thelma and Louise—”

“Relax, Jeannie,” Lorna says, magnetically steering the car toward the edge of the dropoff. “I’ve got this.” 

At the last second, Jean lets go of the steering wheel and grabs Lorna’s hand instead, screaming the whole time. The car sails off the cliff and keeps going, soaring through the air. It’s less like the end of “Thelma and Louise” and more like the end of “Grease.”

“See? I told you there was nothing to worry about,” Lorna says. “I just wish I could see the look on Logan’s face.” 

“Okay, fine, nice going, Fast and Furious,” Jean says, willing her heart to stop racing. “You gonna put us down?”

“I’ll set us down in Jersey,” Lorna decides. “That way we don’t have to pay tolls.” 

“Logan’s going to go back and tell Scott and Alex what happened.” 

“Let him,” Lorna says, leaning back to put her hands behind her head. “Wish I could see the looks on  _ their _ faces, too.” 

The car flies onward, and Jean fiddles with the radio. It isn’t until about five songs later that she remembers one crucial detail about Thelma and Louise’s iconic car chase: after they sailed off the cliff, they kissed. 

* * *

That first night on the road, they wind up at a Marriott in Virginia. They book a single, because, Jean reasons, they never had a problem sharing space when they were younger. Why should this be different? 

But then she can’t get to sleep. All night long, she lies awake listening to Lorna’s soft breathing in the dark. Her skin prickles, and she lies as still as possible and thinks about magnets, positive and negative poles, attraction. 

Lorna drives the next day while Jean dozes in the passenger’s seat. 

* * *

One day they stop for lunch at a Denny’s. Lorna’s in a playful mood, and when Jean reaches for her spoon it skitters just out of her grasp. Jean bides her time, then gets her revenge the next time Lorna leans forward for a sip of her orange juice. The straw moves to the other side of the glass, swirling around while she tries to chase it with her mouth. Lorna ultimately gives up and sighs, and she looks so annoyed that Jean takes pity on her and sets the straw free. 

“I should throw this on you,” she scowls, finally taking a sip. 

Jean winks. “And drench me with OJ? Sounds like you’re trying to get me out of these clothes.” 

* * *

At Lorna’s insistence, they drive eastward to the shore, stopping at a Kroger to pick up sunblock, snacks and magazines. Jean picks up a cheesy paperback romance novel from the shelf by the greeting cards. “I used to love reading these when we were kids.”

“So buy it,” Lorna suggests. “Hank’s not here to be pretentious.” He used to judge them so much about the books they used to read, Bobbsey Twins and Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, along with the cheesy romances. 

Jean buys the book, along with a bottle of moscato. 

“Oh, I forgot Oreos,” she says once they get to the register. “I’m gonna run and grab them. Here, you can pay,” she says, handing Lorna her credit card. Lorna puts her hands up like she’s warding it off. 

“I can’t touch those things, I demagnetize them,” she says, dead serious. “Just hurry back, okay?”

* * *

It's a gray day, so the beach is mostly empty. Too cold for them to really go swimming, but warm enough for Lorna to roll up the legs of her jeans and wade through the shallow water, her feet squelching in the wet sand. Jean grabs a blanket from the backseat and spreads it on the ground so she can sit and read without getting sand anywhere. 

The book is fun, exactly the kind of steamy over-the-top romance novel she likes. Despite this, she only gets about seven pages in while she's sitting there. 

Her gaze keeps getting drawn to Lorna. The more time she spends splashing in the waves and examining shells along the shore, the more the weight on her shoulders seems to lift.

* * *

There’s only one CD in the car and it’s the Grease soundtrack, and after about two play-throughs neither of them can go through that anymore, so they stop at a used bookstore and pick out a stack of CDs, old sixties beach music for Lorna and Joni Mitchell for Jean. While Lorna’s flicking through the vinyl selection just for fun— who listens to vinyl anymore?— Jean wanders into the fiction section and picks out some more paperbacks about women ditching their cheating husbands to go to Nantucket or Charleston and fall in love with photographers and architects and fishermen. 

* * *

“Marriage is just another construct put in place to keep women down,” Lorna decides, letting the wind whip her hair into a frenzy while they drive. “It’s not about love, it’s about power dynamics.”

“I don’t know.” Jean’s hair is pulled back with a scrunchie. “I think it goes past all the legal stuff and the social stuff, it’s something… deeper, more special. It’s about loving someone so much that you’re ready to say you’ll spend forever with them.” It strikes her, suddenly, that she is defending the concept of marriage to a woman who was just left at the altar. That her own husband is most likely back in Westchester tangled in Emma Frost’s satin sheets. “Alright,” Jean concedes. “Maybe marriage is a scam. But it shouldn’t be.”

“What should it be?” Lorna asks.

“Trust. Love. Devotion,” Jean says. “It should mean something. It should mean something to the person you want to be with.” 

* * *

Lorna finds a deck of X-Men playing cards at a novelty shop and spends one evening meticulously snipping up all the Havok ones in the corner of their hotel room. “You know what?” she says, interrupting Jean’s reading, “I wonder if Alex left me because… because he knew. About me. About the pretending.”

Jean shoots her a quizzical look. “What do you mean, ‘pretending’?”

“It’s like… it’s like…” She sets down her scissors, struggling to find the right words. “It’s like my whole life I’ve just been doing what I  _ thought _ I was  _ supposed _ to do. And… and I know this sounds crazy, but when Malice took over my body, as terrible as it was… it was kind of a  _ relief _ . I didn’t have to keep up the act anymore.”

“The act,” Jean says slowly, not really a question.

“I didn’t have to pretend for Bobby anymore, or Alex,” Lorna elaborates. “I could just…  _ be _ . I never want Malice anywhere  _ near _ me again but, oh man, would I love to get the chance to just  _ be _ again.” 

“Feel free,” Jean says, setting her book on the bedside table and watching Lorna more closely. “It’s just you and me here, Dane. What do you  _ want _ ?”

Lorna’s eyes meet hers, measuring her, deciding. And then she crosses the room and gently, gently, kisses Jean. She’s slow and cautious, like she thinks Jean is going to jerk away, but Jean doesn’t, just responds in kind. “I'm such a mess,” Lorna sighs, shoving her hair out of her face. Jean lets her hand rest over Lorna's back, trying to be there for her without overwhelming her. 

“You're not,” she says softly. “You're one of the strongest people I've ever known, Lorna Dane.”

Lorna says, “I think I’m a lesbian. But I think I’m too old to be figuring that out now.”

Jean laughs, kind of a breathy sound, amused but not mean, and she flops backward onto the bed, staring up at the popcorn ceiling. “I see kids at the school, kids like Bling! and Anole and they just… they  _ know _ who they are already. They’ve got it figured out. I can’t fathom it. When I was their age all I knew was I wanted Scott to pay me more attention and I wanted to kiss—” She cuts herself off, clams up.

“Kiss who?”

“No one. Never mind,” Jean says. 

“Kiss  _ who _ ?” Lorna asks, nudging Jean’s leg. Goosebumps pop up where her fingers make contact with Jean’s skin. 

“I’ll tell you, okay, but you’re not gonna like the answer, so just remember you wheedled it outta me,” Jean sighs. “Wanda, alright?”

“WANDA?” Lorna leans over Jean. “Wanda? Well she’s married to a  _ robot _ , Jeannie, I  _ know _ I’m a better kisser than  _ her _ .” To prove it, she kisses Jean again, enthusiastic, exuberant. Jean laughs in between being peppered with kisses. 

“Hey,” she says finally, reaching up and cupping the side of Lorna’s face. “Don’t do anything because you feel like you’ve got something to prove. Do it because you want to… if you want to.” 

* * *

In a cold hotel room somewhere in Virginia, Jean’s kissing a line up Lorna’s neck, the bedsheets tangled around their legs. “I just realized,” she says in between kisses, “in another world… you and I would probably be sisters-in-law.” 

Lorna pulls her up to meet her mouth and her teeth tug against Jean’s bottom lip. “I like our world better,” she says in the breathy space between them. 

* * *

Lorna buys a disposable camera at a CVS and fills it up with pictures of the two of them eating breakfast at greasy spoons all down the coast. She snaps photos at beaches and seafood joints, including a lovely picture of Jean in a lobster bib with melted butter at the corner of her mouth. She's smiling.

* * *

The road goes on forever. They’re going nowhere and everywhere. They’ll never run out of music on the radio; they’ll never run out of cheap paperbacks to read on beaches up and down the coast. 

A live band howls out a ZZ Top song in a dusty roadhouse somewhere in the South. Lorna passes Jean something fruity and fragrant in a glass and smiles at her over the sugared rim of her own drink. 

They dance, and they stand too close to each other. They are anonymous. On the walk back to the motel, Jean kisses Lorna, tastes lime and liquor. 

* * *

One night, while Jean is lifting Lorna’s legs over her shoulders to get a better angle, something on Lorna’s left ankle catches her attention. She looks closer. “Our stick-and-poke tattoos,” she remembers, tracing the old design with one finger. 

“Yeah,” Lorna says breathlessly, her hair damp with sweat and forest green, splayed out on the pillow behind her. “I still remember the day we did them.”

“So do I.” The tattoo is faded, more blue than black now, but still recognizable as the Venus symbol that matches the tattoo on Jean’s own ankle. She presses a kiss to the old mark, and then keeps kissing up the length of Lorna’s calf to her thigh, higher and higher. 

* * *

Later, while they’re lying naked on top of the sheets and letting the chill of the hotel air conditioner cool them off, Jean pulls her knee up to her chin so she can show Lorna her own tattoo. 

Despite everything, it’s still there, that symbol she and Lorna had chosen together because they were sick of Hank, Bobby, Scott, Warren and Alex discounting them for being girls. They’d nicked a bottle of India ink from Bobby’s room and used one of Jean’s sewing needles to etch the symbols into their skin. 

To make it even riskier than the average at-home tattoo, Lorna had used magnetism to move the needle. When it was Jean’s turn to do her, she used telekinesis. “This way it’s more sanitary,” Jean had insisted, as they’d giggled in the exuberance of doing something secret just for the two of them. 

“The Phoenix didn’t have the tattoo,” Jean ponders suddenly. “When she took my form, took my life… she didn’t copy that. But no one would have thought to check.”

“I would have,” Lorna says, but then remembers that she didn’t. “I should have. I’m sorry.” 

“I know."

* * *

“Your phone’s ringing,” Lorna informs Jean, passing her her cell phone. Jean doesn’t recognize the number but she answers anyway, mentally preparing herself to hear Scott’s tense voice or Hank’s anxious growl. What she hears instead is a pleasant surprise— the soft twang of one Mississippi marauder. 

“Hi, Jeannie. It’s me, Rogue.”

“Hey,” Jean says, leaning against the hood of her car. “It’s… good to hear from you. What’s going on?”

“Well, you know how we’ve been lookin’ for my mom’s diaries, right?” she says. “Word is there’s one right about where you are now. You could save us a trip to North Carolina.”

They can cross any state line they want, but they can’t get away from the X-Men. “How do you know where we are?” Jean asks. 

“Ah had Sage check Cerebro.”

“Well—”

“Now, wait a minute, Jean,” Rogue cuts her off before she can get mad, “just so you know, it wasn’t me what wanted to check in on you. It was your hubby’s voice rattlin’ around inside my head. Just so you know. Ah’d’ve left ya alone. But now that Ah  _ know _ where ya are… it’d be a big help to us if you could check this thing out.” 

Jean lets that marinate in her mind for a moment. “O...kay,” she says finally. “Where exactly are we looking?”

* * *

Rogue’s instructions lead them to a public library in Greensboro. It’s cute, with arched windows and a hand-painted sign listing the daily times for children’s storytelling. “This is the address,” Jean says, keeping her voice low. It is a library, after all. She doesn’t want to be shushed. “But… I don’t know what these numbers mean.” 

Rogue had read off what Irene had written, but beyond the address itself, what Jean has written on a slip of paper seems like some kind of cryptic code. Maybe they need a cipher— or, if he were still alive, Cypher. Jean frowns. 

Lorna peeks over her shoulder— and laughs. “That’s the Dewey Decimal System, babe.” 

Jean scowls. “I would’ve figured that out.” 

“Uh-huh,” Lorna teases, pecking her on the cheek. She snatches the paper from Jean and starts hunting. “Okay, 800s, that’s literature,” she explains, heading for the correct section of the library. Illustrations of Winnie the Pooh, Harry Potter and Oliver Twist watch them from displays on the shelves. 

“How do you know the Dewey Decimal System by heart?” Jean asks.

“Spent a lot of time with Hank’s old girlfriend Vera,” Lorna responds without looking at her. “You know she’s gay now? I mean, I guess she was gay before… you know what I mean.” 

“Right, right,” Jean says, her eyes skimming past the Jane Austen books on the shelf in front of her. 

“Plus, I used to hang out in libraries all the time as a kid,” Lorna says. “It was like… I don’t know. I liked realistic fiction. I liked reading about girls whose biggest problems were mean girls at school or unruly horses.” 

Jean grins. “Lorna Dane, were you a horse girl?” 

“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Lorna says. She’s stopped walking now, and she draws a book out from the shelf. “This is it— 823.8 DOY. It’s— oh!” She laughs. “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.” 

“I don’t get it. Why is that funny?”

“These are classics! What did you read when you were a kid, Jeannie?” Lorna sighs.

“I was a teen superhero,” Jean reminds her. “Professor X didn’t exactly give us assigned reading.” 

“We’re renting a bunch of audiobooks and we’re going to listen to all of them,” Lorna promises, or threatens. “Anyway. It’s funny that Destiny sent us here to this book because her name— Irene Adler— it’s the same as the most famous woman in Sherlock Holmes canon.” 

“Coincidence?” Jean asks. “Or— she chose the name out of the book?” She’s always guessed Raven Darkholme was a pseudonym. Maybe Irene Adler was, too. 

“Or Arthur Conan Doyle named the character after her,” Lorna points out. “Anyway…” She opens the book. 

It’s been hollowed out, a hole cut into it large enough to store a small pocket journal. “That’s it,” Jean breathes, reaching for the diary. “That’s Destiny’s diary.” 

Jean slips the diary in her purse while Lorna signs up for a library card. True to her word, she walks out with three audiobooks— two “classics” and a more modern mystery novel read by a soap opera actor. 

Jean drives out of Greensboro with Destiny’s diary weighing on her curiosity and a smooth voice on the stereo describing Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. 

* * *

They drive until they hit Charleston, and then they stay in a cute little hotel near the shore. The sun hits the sand and lights it up gold, and the water seems to stretch on forever, occasionally dotted by fishing trawlers and sailboats. 

Jean leans on the railing of their balcony and appreciates the view, and then Lorna comes up behind her and twines her arms around Jean’s waist. The sun sets. Lorna kisses Jean and carries her to their shared bed without breaking contact. 

* * *

When Jean wakes up the next morning, she is thinking about the diary. She’s wondering what secrets and fortunes are tucked away between its pages. There hadn’t been time yesterday, hadn’t really been a chance to dig into the precog’s journal. Now there is. 

Just as soon as Jean peels back the front cover, though, Lorna’s hand latches onto her wrist. “What’re you doing?” she asks sleepily, blinking at her from the pillow. Her green hair is sticking up in a million directions. She looks gorgeous. 

“Seeing if Destiny wrote down any Powerball numbers in here,” Jean says. Lorna reaches up and closes the diary. 

“No,” she says. “Let’s not look in it. Let’s just bring it to Rogue and the others.”

Jean squints at her. “You’re not curious?”

“I don’t want to know about the future,” Lorna says, curling closer against her in the pale morning light. “I want to be surprised.” 

* * *

Jean listens to her and sets the diary to the side… but her curiosity doesn’t fade. As soon as Lorna gets up to take a shower, Jean grabs the diary and flips through it, scanning for keywords. Once upon a time, Destiny tried to warn them all about Apocalypse and the Twelve. And they didn’t listen. And she lost Scott, almost for good. 

Or maybe not just “almost.” Maybe for good. Scott never was the same after merging with Apocalypse. 

Jean shakes her head and keeps reading. She catches things like  _ A girl called Hope  _ and  _ Krakoa _ and, for some reason, the number  _ 198 _ written over and over again on one page. 

And then she reads something that makes her stomach drop to her feet.

_ The first Phoenix will fall at the hands of Magneto.  _

First Phoenix. Not Rachel, then. Her. Jean Grey.

Jean can’t tell, really, which thought hits her first, whether it’s  _ I’m going to die _ or  _ Lorna’s father is going to kill me _ . Her own mortality rises in her like bile. The wretched, lonesome unfairness of it all threatens to swallow her. She still has the memories of the Phoenix, the real Phoenix, dying. She doesn’t want to die. 

She doesn’t want Magneto to kill her.

They’ve been sworn enemies and teammates. They’ve fought for the same goals. She’s known Magneto— and fought against him— since she was 16 years old. 

But however complicated her feelings are about her oldest enemy and strangest ally becoming her killer, her feelings about how the news might affect this new and fragile  _ thing _ with Lorna are infinitely more tangled. 

She wants to tell Lorna the truth.

She wants to grab Lorna’s hand and run far, far away and never stop running.

She wants to burrow down under the covers and drag Lorna with her and never come out again. 

By the time Lorna steps out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, Jean still hasn’t made up her mind. What she  _ has _ done is stuff the diary back in her purse and tried her best to put on a calm expression. 

“Hey,” Jean says, forcing a smile. “Breakfast?”

“We need gas first,” Lorna tells her. 

* * *

Jean moves dreamlike, driving from the hotel to the gas station in a fog. Lorna has to repeat everything, because Jean’s so out of it. She’s glad that she’s the mindreader and not Lorna. When they get to the station, Lorna runs in to buy maps and sunflower seeds, leaving Jean to fill up the tank. 

And she can’t stop thinking about the entry in Irene Adler’s diary and what it means for her. What it means for her and Lorna. And even now, when Jean’s twisting in the wind and unsure how she feels about much of anything, she knows how she feels about getting her fortune told. She knows exactly how she feels about fate and predetermined courses. 

So she rips the page out of the diary, tears it into halves, then quarters, and tosses it in the garbage can. 

* * *

Lorna comes back outside a few minutes later waving her purchases like she won them. “What’s wrong?” Lorna asks, squinting at Jean. “You’re lookin’ at me funny.” 

“I’m just thinking,” Jean says. “About how… fate doesn’t mean anything. And the future isn’t planned, and we don’t have to do anything anyone tells us. We don’t have to fill any role other people gave us.”

Lorna gives her an incredulous look. “You were thinking about all this while you were pumping gas?” 

“Kinda, yeah,” Jean says. “I’m serious. We don’t have to follow the planned path. What do you want to do for breakfast?”

“Uh… well, maybe we could—”

“No. No maybe, no could’ve-should’ve,” Jean declares, clapping her hands together. “From now on, the future doesn’t matter. Quick responses, kneejerk reactions. Where do you want to eat?”

“Cracker Barrel,” Lorna says with no deliberation.

Jean grins, wide. “Cracker Barrel it is.” 

Eventually, Lorna will develop the photos in her disposable camera and a couple of them will have someone's thumb covering the corner of the frame, or Jean will be blinking or Lorna will be looking away. And maybe that's alright. Lorna will accrue a mountain of late fees on those audiobooks and never send them back. Jean’s paperbacks will turn yellow in the sun. 

A couple of other motorists at the gas station can see them, but it doesn’t really matter because Jean’s living for right now. She kisses Lorna right there in the open, smelling of gasoline. 

It’s glorious.    
  



End file.
